


Not Coincidence (but providence)

by verulam (krynon)



Series: borderlands shortfic! [2]
Category: Borderlands, Tales from the Borderlands - Fandom
Genre: Dissociation, M/M, Possession, Sensory Overload, Stream of Consciousness, Surreal themes, Trans Male Character, Trans Siren Rhys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-22
Updated: 2015-08-22
Packaged: 2018-04-16 17:23:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4633797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/krynon/pseuds/verulam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rhys is plugged into the ECHOnet.</p><p>It goes like this: First, there is everything. And then there is nothing at all. There is always Jack, though. There's always Jack.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Coincidence (but providence)

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Depersonalisation, _massive_ sensory overload, surreal content, _graphic_ depictions of heightened mental states.
> 
> Essentially just vent. Unbeta'd, so apologies for any mistakes!

“I’m a big believer in  _believing,_ ” Jack says.

Rhys says, “Okay.”

“You see, I think that you can  _make_ it happen, if you just try  _hard_  enough.” A pause. “I mean  _I_  can, obviously. Not you, necessarily. Like,  _not_  you.”

“Oh,” says Rhys.

He isn’t feeling particularly eloquent at the moment.

He’s in the chair. The  _chair_. That  _goddamn_ chair, that he’d admired so much that he’d gone  _willingly-_

(A beep, Jack presses some button that appears as if from nowhere-)

But now it’s in his head and Rhys can feel everything a million galaxies wide.

“What’s-  _woah._ ” Rhys mumbles into the gaps he can  _suddenly feel._  Where before he’d seen air now the ECHOnet is  _flooding,_  messages back and forth and flaring, and-

“What’s  _that?”_ And he can’t help it, he’s staring, bright wings branded to him and shining metal flashing back-forth in his eyes, terrible and twisting in a way he can’t understand but feels so  _terrifyingly familiar he wheezes-_

“That’s…” A split second, Rhys sees with  _everything now,_  and Rhys catches the lie, sees it reads it catalogues it, breathes it out and twists it in his head to see the left and right of it and- Jack continues. “That’s the Vault.”

No, it  _isn’t_ , Rhys wants to say, he’s never met a siren but he knows what they are, and he knows that  _that is not a vault,_  that vaults didn’t have wings and want him  _dead._

“Come on, kid. Be more  _cooperative._  You’re the  _ECHOnet,_ now. That’s a big responsibility.”

And a beep, Rhys sees Jack press a button but can’t read the protocol, can’t process the flash of “Confirm? Y/Y” before it’s swept away in a mass of  _stuff,_ deep and wrought and  _in him, there’s- there’s too much-_

“J- _Jack, I can’t-”_

Everything is him, he is  _everything,_  this is nothing like with Helios and now Jack wasn’t there and everything is stiflingly full but crushingly empty at once, and there’s nothing to  _hold,_  hands shackled down and shoulders twitching in as he keeps his eyes wide and tries to sift through the screaming  _everything-_

Then there’s a pop-up he  _can_  read, he catches a glimpse and that’s enough, “Run program, Handsome_Jack.exe? Y/Y?” and he has just a  _flash_  of time to laugh and ask himself why he had an  _operating system that only gave positive options, now-_

But of course he’d have said yes even if he  _could_  have said no, because- there’s cosmos in him, creeping and  _shouting_  at him, because the ECHOnet was never meant to be  _a person,_ certainly not  _Rhys-_

_There was never meant to be a universe inside his head-_

Then there’s a beep, a “Yes,” a sigh, and then  _Jack is there._

“Hello,” Rhys murmurs, and that’s all he can manage because he can feel every speck of stardust and every word people say, every glance and every person Jack killed and every person he thought he was trying to save-

Jack is there, though, and Jack picks him up somehow because suddenly there’s something  _harsh_  unfurling at his back and he’s  _screaming-_

“Those scars, right, Rhys?” Says the Jack that’s a foot across the room but could be  _lightyears away_ for all Rhys knew, noise and  _burning_  and  _too much inside,_  breaking out at his shoulders and- and-

“What-?” He forces out, but doesn’t get much further that the first syllable and a  _gasp_ because suddenly he’s less than everything and is just-Helios again, and the cameras show him that there’s  _shards of light at his back and pain in his chest where he knows there is just too much of everything shoved-_

“The ECHOnet was never meant for normal people, babe.” Says Jack, both and one together, Handsome Jack and the man sitting in his brain and pulling at the strings of his existence and jamming his hands  _deep_  into the workings of his brain.  “But you aren’t ‘ _normal people’.”_

Then Jack is flexing his muscles and everything  _turns_ , axis bent and twisted, thoughts twisted at the seams because he’s everything again but now- now-

Oh.

Rhys… Well.

His wings flex under Jack’s fingers, and they shiver and shatter with every heartbeat, and he’s not sure there should be  _that_  many a second, because he feels like he’s flittering in and out of existence  _with_  them-

 _So._  Well. He was a siren.

Jack moves his wings and they flare against his consciousness in a way that cringes at the seams.

“Hey, kid. You okay?” One of them says, but Rhys can’t  _hear_  it, too much on every side and the splitting burn of his back and the  _terrible ache in his ribs,_  the way the whole universe is  _back,_  pumping through his every neuron, every nerve, sitting in the plasma of his blood and  _buzzing-_

It’s like the whole universe is shouting for him to listen, and for once Jack isn’t loud enough to be heard above the crowd.

“ _Kid,”_ Jack says, and this time it’s both of them, Rhys can tell, because he can hear it over the noises of a thousand Pandorans  _shouting with Handsome Jack’s name on their lips-_

_“Rhys!”_

And Rhys gets it because he can see  _everything_  now- It’s too late for Jack, he can’t escape Rhys’ head, not really, no cut-and-paste consciousness, there was  _copy or bust,_  because Jack’s got to  _stay in his head and he can feel it too-_

Then there’s-

There’s-

 _Everything, Jack gone, nothing with him and there’s only the flood of stars and screams and empty space,_  sensations lost and built not for him but for people a million miles away, echoing into his brain and then out again and he’s meant- he’s meant to be looking for something, listening for something, but it’s hard to concentrate when  _the whole fucking universe wants his attention and wants it right now-_

And then dark.

A plug being pulled, a light switch, the weeping of a candle flame as it drips out of existence.

First there is everything, and then there is nothing at all.

 

When Rhys comes to, he’s not in the chair anymore. He’s on the floor, between Jack’s legs, head leant back and limbs sprawled out.

“Okay,” says Jack, in a way that makes Rhys think that he saw more of that than he’d thought, “Okay, we’re… we’re gonna do that  _differently_ , next time.”

Rhys ignores the next time and relaxes gratefully into Jack’s chest.

“Hnngh,” he says, because words seem to have deserted him.

“Shh, shh,” murmurs Jack, hands around him that are strong and broad despite the fact that Rhys  _knows_  he’s a surging war inside of himself. “You’re okay, babe.”

Worryingly, Rhys believes it.

“You’re okay.”

**Author's Note:**

> Find me at verulamion.tumblr.com <3


End file.
